Configuration Variables

How frequently to query for new data. Defaults to 300 seconds (5 minutes).

binary_sensors

(map)(Optional)

Binary sensor configuration options.

monitored_conditions

(list)(Optional)

The conditions to create sensors from.

Default value:

all (motion_enabled, motion_detected)

sensors

(map)(Optional)

Sensor configuration options.

monitored_conditions

(list)(Optional)

The conditions to create sensors from.

Default value:

all (battery, temperature, wifi_strength)

offset

(integer)(Optional)

How far back in time (minutes) to look for motion. Motion is determined if a new video has been recorded between now and the last time you refreshed plus this offset.

Default value:

1

mode

(string)(Optional)

Set to ‘legacy’ to enable use of old API endpoint subdomains (APIs can differ based on region, so use this if you are having issues with the integration).

Default value:

not set

Once Home Assistant starts, the blink integration will create the following platforms:

An alarm_control_panel to arm/disarm the whole blink system (note, alarm_arm_home is not implemented and will not actually do anything, despite it being an option in the GUI).

A camera for each camera linked to your Blink sync module.

A sensor per camera for every item listed in monitored_conditions (if no items specified in your configuration.yaml, all of them will be added by default).

A binary_sensor for each item listed in monitored_conditions (if no items specified in your configuration.yaml, all of them will be added by default).

Since the cameras are battery operated, setting the scan_interval must be done with care so as to not drain the battery too quickly, or hammer Blink’s servers with too many API requests. The cameras can be manually updated via the trigger_camera service which will ignore the throttling caused by scan_interval. As a note, all of the camera-specific sensors are only polled when a new image is requested from the camera. This means that relying on any of these sensors to provide timely and accurate data is not recommended.

Please note that each camera reports two different states: one as sensor.blink_<camera_name>_status and the other as binary_sensor.blink_<camera_name>_motion_enabled. The motion_enabled property reports if the camera is ready to detect motion regardless if the system is actually armed*.

Services

Any sequential calls to services relating to blink should have a minimum of a 5 second delay in between them to prevent the calls fro being throttled and ignored.

blink.blink_update

Force a refresh of the Blink system.

blink.trigger_camera

Trigger a camera to take a new still image.

Service Data Attribute

Optional

Description

name

no

Name of camera to take new image with.

blink.save_video

Save the last recorded video of a camera to a local file. Note that in most cases, Home Assistant will need to know that the directory is writable via the whitelist_external_dirs in your configuration.yaml file (see example below).

Other Services

In addition to the services mentioned above, there are generic camera and alarm_control_panel services available for use as well. The camera.enable_motion_detection and camera.disable_motion_detection services allow for individual cameras to be enabled and disabled, respectively, within the Blink system. The alarm_control_panel.alarm_arm_away and alarm_control_panel.alarm_disarm services allow for the whole system to be armed and disarmed, respectively.

Examples

The following are some examples showing how to correctly make service calls using Blink:

Snap Picture and Save Locally

This example script shows how to take a picture with your camera, named My Camera in your Blink app (this is not necessarily the friendly name in home-assistant). After snapping a picture, the image will then be saved to a local directory called /tmp/my_image.jpg. Note that this example makes use of services found in the camera integration

Arm Blink When Away

This example automation will arm your blink sync module to detect motion on any of your blink cameras that have motion detection enabled. By default, Blink enables motion detection on all cameras so, unless you’ve changed anything in your app, you’re all set. If you want to manually enable motion detection for individual cameras, you can utilize the appropriate camera service but pelase note that motion will only be captured if the sync module is armed.

Here, this example assumes your blink module is named My Sync Module and that you have device trackers set up for presence detection.

Save Video Locally When Motion Detected

When motion is detected, you can use the Blink Home-Assistant integration to save the last recorded video locally, rather than relying on Blink’s servers to save your data.

Again, this example assumes your camera’s name (in the blink app) is My Camera and your sync module name is My Sync Module. The file will be saved to /tmp/videos/blink_video_{YYYMMDD_HHmmSS}.mp4 where {YYYYMMDD_HHmmSS} will be a timestamp create via the use of templating.